Good Old Games Has Dragonsphere For Free

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Do you ever get that feeling where a memory is almost too strong? I’d entirely forgotten about Dragonsphere, and just a glance at the screenshots sent me reeling. How peculiar.

This is all via Good Old Games‘ latest update, that sees improvements to their downloader, as well as a free copy of Dragonsphere for absolutely everybody. Free!

The downloader was, I had thought, ditched in their recent overhaul, but it turns out I’m wrong. And now they’ve rewritten it to provide much more stable support for downloading larger files. You can safely pause and resume downloads – it’s true – I just tried it.

I am now going to continue to freak myself out by remembering Dragonsphere, and wonder how it can be that a game I loved so very much in 1994 can have never reappeared in my life since. I imagine I’ll have something to say about that in a bit.

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Another win for GoG. Speaking of dragons, they also released the D&D:Dragonshard RTS set in the gameworld of Eberron, for $10. The game got pretty mixed reviews at its original release, but I bought it on a whim then and thought it was enjoyable. Not very difficult, at least on normal difficulty levels, but since I’m not a hardcore RTS player that suited me fine.

Dragonshard is a pretty terrible game with cheating AI, atrocious voice acting and a story that is about as engaging as filling out tax forms. I wouldn’t recommend it even if somebody held a gun to my head. Even though in that case I would ask myself just where the hell I went wrong.

It’s also “set in the gameworld of Eberron” the same way that DDO was, which is to say it isn’t. It’s set in a generic fantasy setting with names borrowed from Eberron and a few concepts like dragonshards and warforged stolen, but none of what actually distinguishes Eberron from other settings and makes it awesome.

Voice acting I agree with you. Story I don’t remember to be honest, but apart from Blizzard games do RTS games ever give more throught to the story than as a paper thin vehicle to bring more levels to you? And even Blizzard are in a rut here, you know even before the game has started that at some point an ally will betray you shockingly so you have an excuse to fight units from your own faction.

What I did enjoy about Dragonshard was that some levels felt like a RPG campaign, with puzzles to solve and every unit was important to keep alive. Others were traditional big base building affairs.

Alexander:
Glad to see I’m not the only person who like Eberron. Seems to be a lot of online hate against it from old grognards “WE WANT MORE ADVENTURES IN THE SWORD COAST! MORE DRAGONS!”.
I like the Arcanum-like steampunk feel, the departure of races being automatically evil and fair game, and wish more would be done with the “noir/detective meets fantasy” theme they hint at.

Dragonshard is part of the rarely utilised subgenre of RTS titles – RTS RPG’s which I think took off after Blizzard poplurised Heroes in Warcraft 3. There aren’t many games in this category with Spellforce being the most well known and Heroes of Annihilated Empires being a ridiculously underrated title.

For what it was though Dragonshard was pretty good, tough to complain about its length and it had a decent amount of stuff to do including a lot of quests in the undergrounds.

It’s a decent, underrated adventure. Not really a classic, but no dead-ends or particularly obnoxious puzzles that I remember*. One really, really nice story moment though, which you should avoid finding out in advance.

There’s no real plot stoppers here except for dying and you won’t die that easily. And for me, it IS a classic because I never forgot about this game. I played the demo back in May 1994 when it came on the cover of PC Gamer. When I played the full game some 6 years later, I was blown away. The graphics were still very enjoyable, the amount of stuff you can look at and the quality of writing when examining everything was amazing. Far better than anything Lucas Arts ever made, actually, considering how much Microprose but into this game.

The puzzles are a mixed bunch but not THAT hard – the interface is not as intuitive either – but the amazing plot and atmosphere more than make up for it. There’s also a big plot twist that will send you reeling.

You know, anyone wanting to test out the new private messaging system at GOG might want to consider joining the Witcher 2 Countdown Competition. Ten people will win The Witcher 2 when the game enters preload next week, one of them could be you! There are also two other award categories where you can win other games at GOG. Rules and details can be found at the link above.

The contest closes in five days though, so be sure to enter before that time if you are interested.

I’ve told you all before to register at GOG! I even got 7 games after 5 days registered.The details are: 4 games for free, 2 games as a gift from their nice and generous community, and one I’ve bought for myself 2 days ago after my paypal account limitation removed!(not yet included this free dragonsphere)
You all won’t regret it!

Do you want a free copy of gothic 2 gold edition? I ‘ll send the code for you if you agree, just PM me your e-mail address at GOG (I have the same user name there, my recent post was in The Wicher 2 countdown competition, find me there), consider it as a welcome gift from me as a newbie! and I assure you, it’s not a joke! :)